We Were Liars: Gripping new novel centers on idyllic isle

On a private island off the coast of Massachusetts, a gaggle of blond cousins spends every summer setting sail, playing Scrabble and eating blueberry pie prepared by "the staff."

Margaret Quamme, For The Columbus Dispatch

On a private island off the coast of Massachusetts, a gaggle of blond cousins spends every summer setting sail, playing Scrabble and eating blueberry pie prepared by “the staff.”

The cousins are children of three beautiful sisters, who are, in turn, daughters of “old-money Democrats” Harris and Tipper Sinclair.

Into their world comes outsider Gat, the nephew of the boyfriend of one of the sisters — the same age as the three oldest cousins.

Collectively, the four are affectionately called “the Liars” by the rest of the family.

We Were Liars — a supple, suspenseful new novel by E. Lockhart that is likely to become a hot read of the summer — is told from the point of view of Cadence, one of the older cousins.

Cadence, 17, lives with her mother in Burlington, Vt.

“I used to be strong, but now I am weak,” she says.

The summer two years earlier, Cady had a mysterious “accident” — suffering a blow to the head that left her with excruciating migraines and memory loss.

Her mother tells her: “Be normal now. Right now” — but she can’t.

She is going back to the island to see whether she can put her life together.

We Were Liars makes clear how blurred the line has become between “young-adult fiction” and novels theoretically intended for adults.

In terms of plot and characters, it fits comfortably into the young-adult category.

The heroine is a teenager experiencing first love and conflict with her family. Lockhart’s language is simple, and the novel plays with familiar fairy tales, which Cady reshapes to fit her family.

At the same time, the novel deepens the familiar material, taking adolescent passions seriously and finding archetypal patterns in family drama.

Lockhart cannily sets her story in a place likely to fill adult readers with nostalgic longing, and it is so finely compressed that every word and detail seem necessary.

The novel will win readers for its twists and turns. From its first pages, it hums with suppressed dread, the source of which gradually emerges, and which shadows even the sunniest days on the idyllic island.

Its real strength is that it doesn’t flare out once the plot is fully revealed. It is a story as powerful when reread as when read for the first time, with a mythic slant that transforms the events of everyday life into the potently universal.